Tom Campbell letter stokes controversy over ties to jihadist

WASHINGTON — Republican U.S. Senate candidate Tom Campbell is facing a potentially crippling controversy over his past defense of a fired Florida professor with ties to terrorists and his inconsistent statements regarding what he knew and when about the man's actions.

Dogged for weeks by criticism over his defense of Sami Al-Arian, who later pleaded guilty to aiding terrorists, Campbell has denied knowing about the man's incendiary past, which included nods to Islamic jihad and calls for "death to Israel." He also said that his dealings with Al-Arian occurred before the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

But Campbell, who was then a Stanford law professor, wrote a letter on Al-Arian's behalf months after the Sept. 11 attacks that casts doubt on his claims of ignorance about Al-Arian's radicalism.

"His inconsistent statements are particularly damaging because it creates a credibility problem," said John Pitney, a political science professor at Claremont McKenna College.

Al-Arian was fired by the University of South Florida following an interview with Fox News' Bill O'Reilly two weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, during which he acknowledged proclaiming in a 1988 speech, "Jihad is our path. Victory to Islam. Death to Israel."

Campbell, responding to a request from a fellow law professor rallying scholars to the cause of academic freedom, wrote to the president of the university in January 2002, asking her to reconsider the engineering professor's dismissal.

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"I respectfully wish to convey my sincere alarm that Professor Al-Arian may be treated harshly because of the substance of his views," Campbell wrote.

Campbell has deflected campaign attacks by saying he did not know about the O'Reilly interview at the time and that he wrote the letter before the Sept. 11 attacks. But it turns out neither is true.

Campbell stated in his letter that he "read a transcript of the O'Reilly Factor interview last autumn" but said in a separate passage that he never heard Al-Arian "say anything anti-Semitic, or racist, or religionist, against any group."

Asked to clarify the discrepancy, Campbell said in an interview Tuesday that he could not recall whether all or part of the O'Reilly interview had been read to him or whether he had seen a copy before penning the letter. Whatever the case, though, he insisted that he did not see or hear the "death to Israel" passage.

"I did not hear, I did not read, I was not aware of statements Sami Al-Arian had made relative to Israel," Campbell said in the interview. "And I would not have written the letter had I known about those. ... To say 'Death to Israel' is abhorrent, it's horrible." He repeated that he erred in not researching Al-Arian more thoroughly before coming to his defense.

The two had known each other for years; as Campbell acknowledged in the letter, Al-Arian helped raise money for his failed 2000 Senate campaign.

As for the statement Campbell posted on his Web site last week that he wrote the letter before Sept. 11, 2001, Campbell said: "I didn't have a copy of the letter, so I was speaking from memory. And that's always dangerous, particularly when it was eight, 10 years ago." The letter was first posted online by a Web site called the Investigative Project on Terrorism.

Al-Arian pleaded guilty in 2006 to conspiring to aid the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

The controversy over Al-Arian — combined with Campbell's votes as a congressman to trim economic aid to Israel and his acceptance of campaign contributions in the 2000 campaign from Al-Arian (which at one point he denied) and others with ties to terrorist groups — has given rivals Carly Fiorina and Chuck DeVore an opening to challenge Campbell's commitment to Israel. Campbell rebuts each of the claims with detailed, nuanced arguments, but he has damaged his case with inaccurate statements and recollections, particularly of the O'Reilly interview.

"It never helps when you have to say the dog ate my homework," said Pitney.

A potential source of his problems is the conflict presented by Campbell's two chosen career paths. He has spent his career advocating for civil liberties and academic freedom as a law professor while also trying to get ahead in the cutthroat arena of politics. But defending the rights of unpopular individuals is turning out to be poor politics.

Before his letter surfaced this week, Campbell responded to repeated charges over the past several weeks that he is anti-Israel and sympathetic to terrorists with a mix of outrage and disdain for his accusers.

"That silent slander stops today," Campbell demanded Friday during a radio debate with Fiorina and DeVore.

But on Tuesday, Campbell conceded that the issue surrounding Al-Arian is fair game in the campaign.

"I believe what I did and said even 10 years ago is perfectly relevant," Campbell said. "I hope that the fact I did not remember precisely because of the passage of years is understood."